


a phone call

by lilyjpotter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 17:09:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16876845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyjpotter/pseuds/lilyjpotter
Summary: v sad oneshot as if i do anything else





	a phone call

“Sorry, wrong number,” he says.

“You know it isn’t,” she says, exasperated, finger wrapped around the telephone cord. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” he tells her, when what he’s actually saying—subtext, there are lines and what he says exists inbetween them—is that he just wanted to hear her voice.

“You couldn’t’ve owled me?” she asks. It’s a good question. It’s the right question and the wrong one at once, because she’s wondering if something’s gone wrong and if it has, there’s nothing to be done for it, she’ll be out the front door and away from Petunia, the harsh reality of it is that she’d pick him over everyone.

“Too late for that,” he says, and it’s another time, he knows this whole conversation is going to be him saying things he doesn’t want to say, might as well’ve kept his mouth shut, might as well’ve not called at all. But that’s wrong, too.

“You’re worrying me.”

“Yep,” he says, “sounds right.”

“James.” She grabs the handset and the bloody cord, steals away into the closet. “What’s wrong?” she asks, with the lights off, about the only time she can.

“It’s nothing, Evans,” and she wants to say, _I want it to be_ , because she wants an excuse to see him, to get out of this house.

Where he’s calling her from, she can’t say. Could be a pub, a muggle house, anywhere. She taught him how to use a phone. The pretext of that was so he could call her.

Where he actually is, in a phonebox with the door open, is in the black that’s more blue and bloody cold, stars out. He needs to hear her. The fact is that the world is a wound that’s festering instead of healing. He’s so brilliant he thought he could fix it. Someone he knew went missing the other day and he can’t help but feeling as though he should be able to stop this, somehow. _He knew them. He_ knew _them._

She’s there, legs crossed on the worn-out carpet, worrying at the cord, the tangles. “James,” she says, again. What a nice name he has. What a bad world they live in.

“When are you coming back to school?” he asks.

“Same time as you,” she whispers. She doesn’t want her family to hear.

“That’s too long,” he says, “I want to see you now.”

“I know,” she tells him. “We should get a car.”

“Sirius has a bike,” he says, as if that solves all their problems.

“Yes,” she says, simply, “yes, that’s right.” A pause. “But it’s not very convenient with one of us riding pillion and the other in the sidecar.”

“I don’t know how to drive a car.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“You don’t know how to drive a car.”

“My Dad can teach me.”

“Do you think we’ll have time to do all these things?” he says, abruptly, and she thinks, _ah, here we are_.

“I don’t know,” she says.

“Jack Springleaf went missing and I don’t know where he is.”

“I know.”

“I knew him,” he says.

“I know.”

“Do you ever wish this wasn’t up to us, Evans? That we could walk away from it?”

“Probably.”

“Probably?”

“I mean, yes. I wish none of this was happening to us.”

“Even this? Even you and me?”

“No,” she says, so quickly that she knows she’s given the game away. She’s barely sixteen and knows with perfect clarity that there’s never going to be anyone else for her. She wished she had time to prove herself right. “No, not that.”

“Me either,” he tells her. She can picture him, leaning against the frame, one leg crossed over the other, hand holding the phone to his ear with the other arm tucked firm against his torso. She wishes she was with him right now.

“When will I see you?” he asks, like they can pretend for a second that they haven’t spent this big gap of time apart, like they live on the same street and he could see her tomorrow if he wanted to, like they’re not going to have to wait another month.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she says. What if she could?

“Mmm,” she can hear him breaking on the other line, “no good.”

“How about next week?” She’s near to crying now.

“Wednesday?”

“Wednesday,” she tells him.

He sighs. “I’ll see you in September, Evans.”

She leans into the coats, musty smelling and pilly, thinks she could fall all the way to Narnia if she wanted, when she was little she used to close her eyes against the absolute darkness and wait for something to happen, even when it got too hot. “See you then, Potter,” she tells him. He swallows.

The line goes dead.


End file.
